suggestion of identity of origin. If they be closely compared, in respect of both style and substance, one need not be an expert in comparative criticism to pass from doubt to certainty, that the avowed by Cunningham and the unavowed are from the same pen. The distinctive qualities of Cunningham's admitted notes may be most clearly brought out by placing them beside the genuine Burns notes. Burns is brief, original, and very often either is personal or speaks from personal knowledge; Cunningham inclines to be lengthy, diffuse, and literary. The note in the Reliques to "Saw ye my Peggy," condemned by Dick, is a fair example of bookish invention; that to "The Highland Laddie" is a good specimen of bookish expansion. These can be paralleled with a score of Cunningham's notes in Vol. IV. of his Burns. The family resemblance is so striking, in both form and spirit, as to leave but a thin shadow of doubt of a common parentage.

In The Songs of Scotland, as previously noted, Burns is frequently introduced, but, while affecting anxiety for his reputation, Cunningham does not treat either his opinions, his work, or himself with any excess of generosity. He pounces eagerly upon Burns's most careless slip, points out any loan he may have levied upon an earlier bard, questions his taste, and doubts his attempted improvements upon old songs, but, for ill-conceived and misdirected pseudo-sympathy, the comment upon "For a' that, and a' that "bears the gree.

Who, asks Allan, can blame him for being something of a leveller? For one year he enjoyed the friendship of the northern nobility, and for seven felt their neglect! They caressed him as no poet was ever caressed. “He expected this sunshine to last, and looked for fortune to follow." He had not the fortitude necessary to meet disappointment! "To go at once from the rich man's wine and a table covered with plate to water from the well and the homely fare of a farmer-to leave my lady's hand for the rough stilts of a plough-were descents beyond his expectation, and far too strong for his spirit:—he sank, and died of a broken heart."

Let it be remembered that, from Edinburgh, in October, 1787, Burns wrote Patrick Miller, "I want to be a farmer in a small farm;' that, also from Edinburgh, in January, 1788, he wrote the Earl of Glencairn, "I wish to get into the Excise;" and Cunningham's assertion that Burns "looked for fortune to follow the caressings of the titled, is reduced to a falsehood. He had told the gentry of the Capital in advance, in printed black-and-white, "I was bred to the plough and am independent." To completely disperse the misleading mists of Cunningham's raising we have only to read the letter Burns wrote Mrs Dunlop on 15th January, 1787, that to Dr Moore two days later, to the Rev. G. Lawrie on 5th February, to the Earl of Buchan on the 7th, to Dr Moore on the 15th, to Mrs Dunlop on 22nd March, and why go further? Burns never for a moment lost his head in Edinburgh, or was dazzled by a gilded future. It is Cunningham who loses his head over a fancied weakling whom it is an insult to the Poet's name to call Burns.

That, in the Life, Cunningham is a little less unjust may be admitted, but even there his fancy picture of Burns overturning silver dishes, garlanded decanters, and shoving opposing ladies and staring lords aside that he might rush back to the plough-tail, is pure pantomime. Burns is supposed to cut these capers on discovering the thing he really had already discovered, viz., that to Society he was something of an entertaining curiosity. He was that, but he was also something more, and, while protesting against Cunningham's grotesque dwarfing of Burns, a protest must also be entered against his utter mismeasurement of the kindly intentions of the people of rank, position, and learning, who really were the Poet's friends, and brought the future life he sketched within his reach.

Cunningham represents Burns, on his first arrival in Edinburgh, rambling aimlessly about, and, amongst other things, kissing the sod upon Fergusson's grave. This Dr Wallace (II., 12) mildly suggests may be largely imaginative. It certainly does not consist with Burns's letter of 6th February, 1787, to

sorry to be told that the He did not need "to On the subject of

the Bailies of Canongate--"I am remains of Robert Fergusson lie," etc. be told" if he had already visited the spot. Burns's alleged irregularities, Cunningham begins by discrediting his own witness, by suggesting that Heron was not at all solicitous about the truth. He is then placed upon the stand, and his evidence taken, although it is admittedly weighed "to the dust" by that of Dr Blair. Hyperbole is freely resorted to in treating of both the subscription to the Edinburgh edition, its circulation, and the criticism it evoked. There were not three thousand copies printed, and yet the husbandmen, shepherds, and mechanics of Scotland, "though wages were small and money scarce," subscribed their crowns "in fifties and hundreds," and the volume went " over the country, over the colonies, and wherever the language was spoken." The entire narrative, in short, dealing with Burns in Edinburgh, is marred by looseness alike of plan and statement. It is largely composed of common-place reflections, inconsistencies, exaggeration, and untruth. The general impression it leaves is that Burns played both the boor and the fool, and that in the main, the experience left him irritated, disappointed, and despondent. The general effect is as untrue as many of the

details.

A hazy belief exists that Cunningham knew Burns personally. In "The Burns Country," for example, Mr Charles S. Dougall mentions a statement by Cunningham that he was willing to stand or fall as an author by his "Life of Burns," and goes on to speak of "his personal knowledge of the Poet and of his associates in Dumfries, but no evidence of such knowledge is led. It is doubtful if any exists, except a story first contributed by Allan himself to a periodical mentioned by Lockhart. Mr Frank Miller ("The Poets of Dumfriesshire,' p. 193), says: "Whilst tenant of Ellisland, Burns was neighbour of Cunningham's [i.e., of John Cunningham's, Allan's father]; and on a memorable day in 1790, Allan, standing at his father's knee, heard the great Poet repeat 'Tam o'

a

on

Shanter,' his beautiful voice varying with the character of the tale." In a footnote, Mr Miller refers to Cunningham's essay Robert Burns and Lord Byron in the London Magazine of August, 1824. A comparison of dates, to be made presently, shows that if, at his then tender age, young Allan was captivated by the modulations of Burns's "beautiful voice," he was a marvel of precocity.

The above story is, of course, the original of that communicated to Lockhart for his "Life of Burns," published in 1828. It will be found at p. 197 of the Bohn's Library Lockhart revised and corrected by William Scott-Douglas, and issued in 1882. Lockhart prefaces a long contribution from Honest Allan with the remark that he was "almost a child when he first saw Burns, but he was no common child." Cunningham fixes the time of his reminiscences at Burns's arrival in Nithsdale, and says:-" He came to see my father, and their conversation turned partly on farming, partly on poetry." To make sure, he repeats the assertion, "I said that Burns and my father conversed about poetry and farming. The Poet had newly taken possession of his farm of Ellisland." He had previously spoken of Burns's "fine manly" and "musical" voice. The humour of the situation is brought out by ScottDouglas. By marshalling dates he shows that Allan was somewhat under four-being born 7th December, 1784, he was only three and a half when, on 13th June, 1788, Burns went to Ellisland-when he overheard the conversation on farming and poetry, and about six when, "as he alleges," he listened to the recitation of "Tam o' Shanter." "Cunningham," the caustic comment runs, 'must have been, as Mr Lockhart observes, no ordinary child." Concerning Burns's "beautiful" and "musical" voice, Scott-Douglas simply repeats Stobie (the exciseman's) remark to Robert Chambers-" Burns sang as readily as a nightingale, but he had the voice of a boar."

"

The "hazy belief" above adverted to can only have originated in Cunningham's own stories communicated to the

London Magazine and Lockhart, taken possibly in connection with his father's entry, in 1786, upon the tenancy of Sandbed, on the left bank of the Nith across from Ellisland. With the river between them, the two farmers might very well have been neighbours, without holding much intercourse, and that young Allan ever saw the Poet, the above precocities appear to be the only evidence. When (Vol. III. of the Works) he prints the tale, he adds concerning it (page 180) yet another wonderful memory of boyhood: "I remember with what eagerness 'Tam o'Shanter' was circulated among the Scottish cottages, and how it was scarcely possible for one peasant to meet another without one or both indulging in quotations." This is one of the many self-refuting assertions that disfigure the edition, as well as the Life. The poem was only composed (WallaceChambers, III., 210-11) in the autumn of 1790, the year of the alleged recitation, and it was not published until Grose's Antiquities came out in April, 1791. A question is thus at once provoked as to the source of the peasants' familiarity with the tale. They could not all have got it from the Poet's reading of the copy, which, it is asserted, he carried about in his pocket. Captain Grose's work is not likely to have circulated so freely among the Scottish cottages as to make its contents, even though including a poem by Burns, familiar as household words. Even if it had, there is still a doubt of the knowledge which alone would justify the confidence and comprehensiveness of the memory quoted.

Credulity is strained, and a similar case occurs in connection with "Does haughty Gaul invasion threat?" which Cunningham says (V., 273) became instantaneously popular, “and was soon to be heard on hill and dale." In the Life (p. 320) he is equally extravagant: " Hills echoed with it; it was heard in every street, and did more to right the mind of the rustic part of the population than all the speeches of Pitt and Dundas, or of the chosen 'Five-and-forty.' This is manifestly the work of an irresponsible maker of sounding phrases, and far from the measured language of sober biography.